Jackpot Grant Exercise

· In 75 words or less, summarize your proposal for NAC funding. State project, date, place and purpose. Be brief, this is just a synopsis

         My project would be a hand drawing animation. The length is estimated to be around 5 minutes. The purpose would be focused on biodiversity and the animal endangerment. It would explore the human-environment relationship and how human activities affect species extinction. The project would take place at Church Fine Arts building in University of Nevada, Reno on May 5^th through May 7^th, 2015.  For this project, NAC funding would provide a big financial support of technical approach.

Grant amount being requested (up to $1000): $800

· Primary Contact Name: Jessie Lien

· Primary Contact Title (Organizations only): N/A

· Primary Contact Address: 1664 N Virginia St

· City, State & Zip: Reno, NV 89503

· Primary Contact Email: jlien@nevada.unr.edu

· Applicant Status: Individual

· Grantee Institution: Individual-artist

· Grantee Race: Asian

· Type of Activity: Artwork creation

· Discipline: Media arts-video

1. Provide a concise description of your project. Please include when and where your project will take place. What specific elements of the proposed project will NAC funding support?

         This project would be displayed to the public at Church Fine Arts building in University of Nevada, Reno for two days from May 5^th through May 7^th, 2015. The project contains the elements of biological science and human-environment relationship. It would be a short animation consisted in various animal species drawings. The length is set to be approximately 5 minutes. Five classes of animals, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, would be selected. The video would start out with aquatic mammals then end with marine fish. It would be a looping DVD projected on a wall. Because the theme emphasizes on species extinction, I would choose endangered animals that disappeared due to human activities as my video characters. Also, I would only focus on the species that have the conservation status to be either critical endangered or vulnerable, and very few would be classified as less concern in their conservation condition. Then the images would be drawn by Corel Painter software. The reason I choose to use drawing is because visual art is a common art form and is usually an effective way to transfer message to audience(s). After all drawings were finished, it would be collected and be combined into a video by Adobe Premiere. In the video, the drawings would be played in the horizontal or vertical direction. I would randomly insert the images that slightly explain how human activities affect animal’s survival into the video. For example, when the animation showed the drawings of sea turtles, there would be some photos like turtle trapped in fishing nets. The photos would be set to only pop on less than one second. I want the audiences to view this video more than one time to try to figure out the content of these photos and think about the message behind the animation. The photographs would also help to understand the seriousness of human activity impact on the environment.

2. What is the purpose and goal(s) of the proposed activity? How does it relate to the cultural needs of your community?

         The primary purpose of this project is to appreciate biodiversity and increase the awareness on animal endangerment and species extinction. According to National Geographic, species extinction is happening 1000 times faster when human appears, meaning we are losing plenty of organisms in an unbelievable speed. The issue is typically caused by human activities such as hunting, natural resources consumption, over-exploitation, etc. For example, many amphibians lost their habitats because of agriculture use or industrial contamination. The importance of biodiversity is that it increases natural productivity and maintains ecosystems in balance. For this project, my goal is to bring up more the attention on animal conservation from the audience. I hope the animation would create certain influences on the audience to view nature and life with more respect. Secondary, I hope it can increase public interest in biodiversity by caring wildlife preservation or human impact on natural environment.

3. Describe your target audience(s) for the project. If you use the term "underserved," please provide us with your definition of the word as it relates to population(s) or region(s)

         There would be no specific type of target audience(s) for this project because I think protecting animal diversity is a worldwide topic, and everyone should learn about it and understand. Therefore, the audiences can be included from people with inexperience on biology to professorial scientists. However, since the project would be first installed in University of Nevada, Reno, I would expect the majority of my audiences is going be students major in fine arts, artists that participate the final project exhibition set-up, and university facilities. Then the secondary group might be students major in biological science, local artists, and people who came to visit this exhibition. Furthermore, audiences might be people who physically showed up at this exhibition or watched the video on the Internet. Because this video project would be uploaded to the Internet, target audiences would be predicted to present in a broader range.

4. Provide a concise account of your experience, training and accomplishments as a professional artist.

         I'm an undergraduate student, majoring in biology and minoring in digital art, of University of Nevada, Reno. Because studying the two distinct subjects, my long-term goal for being an artist is to explore the relationship between life science and art. I have completed three projects for my digital art courses to approach my goal. The first is a small sculpture using three eggs as medium. Each egg has some major classes of animals on it. This sculpture expressed the idea of biodiversity. The second assignment is a video triptychs, searching for the connection between water and lives. The recent work is a responding sculpture to Heidegger's article The Question Concerning Technology. It applies the concept on the biotechnique of DNA sequencing. So far, my experience of project working is only limited in personal achievement. To work on this project that I am purposing, I am looking forward to make some influences on our society.

Link for the project assignments:

The diversity mini-sculpture 
http://jessielien-art245.blogspot.com/2014/04/project-7-3d-meat-space.html
Life with water (video) 

http://jessielien-art245.blogspot.com/2014/10/project-3-experimental-video-triptychs.html
ATCG (responding sculpture) 

http://jessielien-art245.blogspot.com/2015/03/project-1-responding-to-heidegger.html

5. Why does your project deserve public funding (state and federal dollars)?

         In many countries and regions, animal conservation has been highly concerned by the government. Some countries even support organization or establish national institutions to protect local animal diversity. Even though my project would not directly assist in animal conservation, it still can raise the audiences’ attention on the issue of animal extinction. In addition, my project would be able to make effect not only on the audience, but also on the artists who are interested in applying this project into their works. However, to extend the influence as possible as I could, it would be beneficial to distribute my project widely. Thus, a certain level of financial support would be very helpful. If receiving NAC funding, I would be able to find better way to increase the distribution of public interest, such as making advertisement and releasing them through mass media. The funding would also help in technical approach, improving the quality of this video project.

6. What methods will you use to market and promote your project to the general public and to specific constituencies? Will this build your audience and make you more visible in the community and/or state?

         I have planned two major ways to distribute my project and to increase the public interest. For the first method, I would apply the advantages of the Internet. After uploading the video, it would have more opportunities to be seen by the public due to the accessibility and rapid transmission. The Internet would also help to transmit my project around the world, bring broader rage of audiences. Second, I would use advertising resources, including social media and communication media, to inform the public about my project and the information of the exhibition.  On the other hand, to gain the attention of specific constituencies, I would find sponsors that might be animal conservation-related organizations and magazine companies to ask for cooperation as an alternative way to distribute my project. By using Internet, accessing mass media, and asking for cooperation from specific organizations, I believe this project would be more visible in public.

7. Describe the methods you will use to evaluate project impact and measure its effectiveness. How do you determine if your goals were achieved?

         For this project, my purpose is to make people be more concern about biodiversity and conservation. Because it is a long-term goal, I think the achievement would be hard to determine. However, I still plan out some methods to estimate the effectiveness of my project. I would invite the artists and cooperators to visit the exhibition and ask for suggestions to my project. I could also look up the comments on the Internet after I upload the animation video, and critiques from magazines, news, or any communication media. In addition to having the public audience to give critiques, I planed to make more drawings and put them into a small collection book. The book would be sold internationally. Then it would act as an alternative method to evaluate project impact by checking the sales volume. This way would allow people to view this project even if not using Internet.

· Projected Expenses

         -the NAC Grant Request: $800

         -technical support on software: $300
         -Ways of distributing public interest: $500

Artist Lecture: Creative Media and Black Visions of Liberation by Terry Marshall

             Storytelling is a powerful medium to bring out concern on social justice. In this lecture, Terry Marshall presented the importance of storytelling in the projects he had participated in. Marshall believed social injustice came from various stories, and gave the example that how slave’s songs referred to their stories of moving to the U.S. In 2008, he moved to New York City and worked in the Healthcare Education Project. The project cooperators tried to figure out what healthcare could exactly help people. Inspiring by the participation of young people in Tea Party election during 2008, Marshall decided to organize the young generation and made them to share their own stories on healthcare. He showed the 6 minutes proposal video during the talk and described the result came out in a very successful effort.

            The effect and action logic were also important when using social media to tell stories. Marshall explained it meant about how you created an atmosphere of changing and examined the actions to see if they fitted into the problem(s) you wanted to relate with. In the respond to the shooting of Antonio Martin, he cooperated with Intelligent Mischief, a hack lab, to create a work called the Black Body Survival Guide.  The project presented in a humorous way but also filled with satire at the same time. The survival tips provided suggestions such as "always be happy", "only wear hoodie at home", "hands up all the time", etc. These tips were taken from people's experiences on police brutality and racism issue. 
             In conclusion of the talk, Marshall summarized that the essential of organization and storytelling was to identify the target audiences, understand the possible effects, and think about the atmosphere of changes. Marshall gave a truly fluent lecture, providing the main points followed by his personal stories. I think the suggestions he gave for the focus of storytelling is very helpful, and also can be applied to any kind of artwork that related to activism.

the Black Body Survival Guide

Exhibition Review: The One Year Performance by Tehching Hsieh

            Tehching Hsieh was from Taiwan and has moved to the U.S since 1974. From 1978 through 1986, he had completed five One Year Performance pieces. The primary piece in this exhibition was one of his One Year Performance pieces, the Time Clock Piece, done by 1980 to 1981.

            Hsieh believes that "life is a sentence". His works explore the meaning of time and freedom. However, when performed in suffering way, he tended to show the irony of freedom throughout a person's life. In the Time Clock Piece, he had to punch a time clock every hour for an entire year, indicating the struggling with time. This piece was presented by all the time cards and the photographs that Hsieh took when he punched the time clock every time. In addition, the photos were collected to make a 6-minutes long video. The cards, photos, and video were all displayed in this exhibition.

Besides holding an exhibition, Hsieh also gave an artist lecture to introduce his other four performance pieces. To me, the Outdoor Piece (1981-1982) is the most interesting work. In this piece, Hsieh restricted himself to stay outside for one year and he could not enter any indoor space. Living like a homeless person, the Outdoor Piece is easily recognized as a respond to social issue by the audiences, even though Hsieh has declared that the work only focused on how we spending the time.

Tehching Hsieh is truly an amazing performance artist. He questions the meaning of existence in time. In most of the One Year performances, Hsieh shaved his head before starting, emphasizing the passage of time. The audiences tend to view his works in an aspect of social concern because we are extremely sensitive to things happened around our lives, such as environmental problems or social issues. But the One Year performance pieces also allow audiences to have a different look on individual existence and the meaning of consuming time throughout our lives.

Artist lecture: Joel Swanson

Joel Swanson, an artist currently lived in Colorado, gave a lecture in the end of January. The primary theme of his work focuses on technology and language. During his graduate years, he enjoyed to create experimental electronic literature pieces, and demonstrated them as digital narrative. However, after graduating from art school, he became more interested in word itself, the materiality of words, and how the structures of words affect the words meaning.

Swanson enjoys using neon light and blinking effect to explore homophone, which means words with the same sound but differ in the meaning, and words formation. Series of works here/there (2011), t/here (2014), Homophone (right, write, rite) (2014), un/non (2014), and NO/NOT/NOTHING (2014) are all the neon installations playing with the connection between structure and definition of words. He wants to tell the audiences that words are embedded to each other.

Another topic Swanson is interested in is indexicality. His piece Untitled (cursor) (2014) is an animation with a simple rectangle blinking on the upper-left corner of the white screen. Although the title does not provide any clue the content, the audiences have the superior connection with it, knowing the rectangle relates to some kind of technological purpose. He also explores linguistic questions in symbols. Logic Only Works in Two Dimensions is a fantastic piece. It is a large floating greater-than symbol. When smoothly rotating, the symbol frequently changes its own meaning.

Joel Swanson's works are accessible and give the audience a new way to have a look words and symbols. As art is usually practiced to refer some ideas, Swanson uses the language to build a stronger connection between art and conceptual language.

Untitled (cursor)

Logic Only Works in Two Dimensions

Exhibition Review: Pink Elephants on Parade By Nick van Woert

            The exhibition Pink Elephants on Parade was hold between February and March. Nick van Woert tended to explore the meaning of objects. Growing up in Reno, Nevada, Woert had surrounded by the architectures built with imitated materials, which meant a sculpture was no longer made by natural substances; instead, the material was synthesized from chemical matters. Pink Elephants on Parade presented the similar idea. The installed works were all large sculptures made from artificial materials to represent natural landscape, implying the fakeness of material use on architecture.

            The materials Woert used for his works are usually various and unlimited. Additionally, most of the presented works were named as Untitled. Because Woert is interested in the meaning of word and how it connects to material, the name Untitled may refer to a particular purpose. In Pink Elephants on Parade, I was interested in the sculpture Untitled. Although Untitled shared its name with other sculptures, it contained the most materials among the displayed works. The materials contained many kinds of granular substances such as cat litter, coal slag, plaster, pulverized plastic, steel, and bronze. Other materials like base coat, joint compound, and Plexiglas were also used to support the sculpture structure. To me, Untitled was really attractive because it strongly presented Woert's opinion of the material use on modern architecture. If the materials of Untitled had not been listed, the audience might have thought it was simply made from colored sands. 

            By using the title Pink Elephants on Parade from the Disney movie Dumbo, I think Woert tended to emphasize the illusion of modern architecture. In the scene of Pink Elephants on Parade, Dumbo sees a series of illusion after being accidentally drunk. Similarly, Woert's exhibition reveled the imitation of architectural material, replacing the substances from natural sources with various chemicals.